Never seen it, never experienced it, never been there during – and that is………autumn in Arrowtown. Nothing screams autumn more than Arrowtown. “Anyone who thinks fallen leaves are dead has never watched them dancing on a windy day.” When Scotty says “you gotta go see the colours in Arrowtown” then it was a no brainer […]
Where is Lake Mahinerangi? As there are still a few ‘gaps in our map’, we thought that we would revisit the small Otago township of Lawrence and set about exploring the nearby Lake Mahinerangi and Waipori Falls areas. Lake Mahinerangi lies only 35km west of Dunedin and approximately a 35km drive from our base […]
Finish What We Started We got a taste of the Danseys Pass when we travelled half of the Pass from the Livingstone end, during the winter months. As expected, it was closed around 23km into the drive over the Danseys Pass. We never got to climb the summit or make it all the way through […]
Where is Waipiata? That’s pretty much what I asked when I first heard about Waipiata. Little did I know that I actually cycled past it when we rode the Otago Rail Trail about 8 years ago. Leaving our camping spot after spending 3 days exploring St Bathans (see my previous blog), we headed to the […]
Like the miners in the 1800s, we were lured to St Bathans to discover gold. Well actually, the history surrounding the discovery of gold to be exact. The Creation of St Bathans St Bathans began as a boomtown known as Dunstan Creek way back in 1863. In less than a year, there were 1,000 miners […]
Thomson Gorge Road – Dunstan Mountains The day after we ‘nailed the Nevis Valley’ (click on the previous blog here), the sun was still shining so we thought we’d conquer the Thomson Gorge Road. We decided to travel the road over the Dunstan Mountains from west to east. This meant we joined Thomson Gorge […]
Exploring Alexandra Alexandra was only a short drive from our camping spot at Pinders Pond near Roxburgh (46km). See our previous blog. We had our eyes on finishing off the Roxburgh Gorge Cycle Trail by cycling Alexandra to Doctors Point and return. More on this later in the blog. Alexandra has a bit of a […]
Nestled beside the magnificent Mount Benger range, the small sleepy township of Roxburgh sits in the heart of the stunning Teviot Valley in Central Otago. Some of NZ’s largest and best summer fruits can be found here. They have been growing stone fruit here as early as the 1880s, starting off with a couple of […]
It was time to finish what we had started and explore the rest of The Catlins. We’ll call this blog Catlins – Part Three, which takes us to the northern end of the stretch of coastline. If you haven’t yet read my previous blogs, you can check them out here (Catlins – Part One and […]
After pressing pause on our explorations of the Catlins (see our previous blog here), Arrowtown was next on our sights. When it comes to Arrowtown for us, it’s a case of ‘never say never’! The Timing was Right for Arrowtown Now, we admit that we’re not fans of the Queenstown/Arrowtown area. It is not the […]